Classically Optimal Variational Quantum Algorithms

Hybrid quantum-classical algorithms, such as variational quantum algorithms (VQAs), are suitable for implementation on noisy intermediate-scale quantum computers. In this article, we expand an implicit step of VQAs: the classical precomputation subroutine, which can nontrivially use classical algorithms to simplify, transform, or specify problem instance-specific variational quantum circuits. In VQA, there is a tradeoff between […]

Efficient Boolean Methods for Preparing Uniform Quantum States

As each quantum algorithm requires a specific initial quantum state, quantum state preparation is an important task in quantum computing. The preparation of quantum states is performed by a quantum circuit consisting of controlled-NOT (CNOT) and single-qubit gates. Known algorithms to prepare arbitrary n -qubit quantum states create quantum circuits in O(2n) runtime and use O(2n) CNOTs, which are more expensive […]

Reducing the Depth of Linear Reversible Quantum Circuits

In quantum computing the decoherence time of the qubits determines the computation time available, and this time is very limited when using current hardware. In this article, we minimize the execution time (the depth) for a class of circuits referred to as linear reversible circuits, which has many applications in quantum computing (e.g., stabilizer circuits, […]

Exploiting Symmetry Reduces the Cost of Training QAOA

A promising approach to the practical application of the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) is finding QAOA parameters classically in simulation and sampling the solutions from QAOA with optimized parameters on a quantum computer. Doing so requires repeated evaluations of QAOA energy in simulation. In this article, we propose a novel approach for accelerating the […]

Quantum Algorithms for Mixed Binary Optimization Applied to Transaction Settlement

In this article, we extend variational quantum optimization algorithms for quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problems to the class of mixed binary optimization problems. This allows us to combine binary decision variables with continuous decision variables, which, for instance, enables the modeling of inequality constraints via slack variables. We propose two heuristics and introduce the transaction […]

Quantum Attacks on HCTR and Its Variants

Recently, in Asiacrypt 2019, Bonnetain et al. have shown attacks by quantum adversaries on FX construction and Even-Mansour Cipher without using superposition queries to the encryption oracle. In this article, we use a similar approach to mount new attacks on Hash-Counter (HCTR) and Hash-Counter-Hash (HCH) constructions. In addition, we mount attacks on HCTR, tweakable-HCTR, and […]